June 4, 2015

Allow me to emerge from my self-imposed hibernation to comment briefly, as I have done nearly every year in this blog’s 13-year history, on what happened in the streets around Tiananmen Square and in other Chinese cities on June 4th, 1989.

I had just moved to Phoenix in the Spring of 1989 for a new job, and for the first time I could afford cable television. CNN’s coverage of the demonstrations in China transfixed me as I watched the entire drama unfold. I remember watching amazed as the students carried out the “Goddess of Democracy,” and as thousands of others — not only students but working people, even police officers — joined the demonstrating masses. I had no particular interest in China at the time, but was riveted to my TV set; I saw the students as heroes and the government as villains. Now I know it was not nearly so black and white, but I still see the students as idealists fighting for a noble cause, and I see those who ordered the shootings as murderers.

In past posts on the subject, some of my Chinese commenters came back with the “America does it too” argument, pointing to the Kent State shootings. But here’s the big difference: Everyone in America who is literate and curious about the nation’s history is familiar with the story of the Kent State massacre. Public television (maybe CNN?) just a few weeks ago had a special program all about the shootings, what led up to them and how the deaths were seared into the national psyche. In China, of course, not only is there a total blackout of anything having to do with the TS demonstrations and ensuing massacre, there is a willful campaign to purge it from the national consciousness.

I can’t say much more about this subject than I have in the past. I’ve acknowledged that not all the students were angels, and that they had power issues of their own. But they were fighting for the right cause — greater representation, challenging rampant corruption, demanding accountability from those in power. The catastrophic turn of events that culminated in soldiers firing live ammunition into crowds on the side streets of Tiananmen Square was an act of brutality I can never forgive or forget.

One year ago I wrote a post about the remarkable book by former NPR correspondent Louisa Lim, The Peoples’ Republic of Amnesia. I wish everyone who argues that enough has been said about the “incident” already and that it’s time to move on and forgive/forget would read this book, which makes it clear that the TSM remains an open wound for many, and that won’t end until the government comes clean about what actually happened. As I wrote in my post:

…Lim notes how thoroughly the government has wiped out nearly all memories of the TSM. Every reference to it is silenced. The Tiananmen Mothers are persecuted. Several Chinese I spoke with in my old office said the only thing they know about it is that angry demonstrators killed innocent soldiers. Ignorance is Strength. This is what I call brainwashing — wiping the slate clean and restricting what the people can know. Anyone who reads this book will have no doubt that the Chinese people have been brainwashed on the subject.

In addition, a fine review of Lim’s book in last year’s Economist lays out the argument that the effects of the TSM resonate through China today:

One of Ms Lim’s most revealing portraits is of Bao Tong, an outspoken former senior official in Beijing who was imprisoned for seven years after the crackdown and still lives under constant surveillance. She says that from Mr Bao’s perspective the suppression of the protests was the “defining act” of modern-day China, accounting for its major ills today: rampant corruption, lack of trust in the government, a widespread morality crisis and the ascendancy of the security apparatus. The Chinese may not be so quick to blame the 1989 bloodshed, but most would recognise these symptoms.

One of the most illuminating chapters in the book deals with an atrocity I had no idea ever occurred, namely the brutal beating to death of demonstrating students in Chengdu. Lim’s harrowing description of the murders, carried out in a hotel courtyard is evidence that there is still much about the June 4th incident that hasn’t been exposed. Read the book for this alone. The violence in Chengdu is a story I will never forget.

Many Chinese — even a friend of mine — argue that the TSM was unfortunate but necessary to keep the Party in power so it could oversee the “economic miracle” that started in the early 1990s. It’s a shame some lost their lives, but it was more important to keep China from sliding into chaos and anarchy the way Russia did.They also argue that proof of the massacre’s justification is that China is moving toward greater political freedoms — the demonstrations were not necessary, the CCP is heading in the direction the students demanded all by itself. An article I saw today does a good job blowing a hole in this argument.

Even today, there are still some who believe that with further development, and the growth of a middle class, China will gradually evolve towards liberal democracy. This long-held narrative presupposes that China is on the right path now. But it isn’t. It isn’t, because of choices made through political expediency after the Tiananmen Massacre. Continuing down this crooked path is simply going to move China further away from democracy, and this has become plainly evident especially over the last couple of years since Xi Jinping took power. For 26 years, precisely because too many people have accepted the faulty premise of economic development inevitably leading to political reform, the proper and righteous resistance to the Party’s dictatorship has been forgotten. Instead, the world sits and watches, or even helps the hydra grow.

There’s a lot more I can say on the subject: tank man, the Tiananmen mothers, Zhao Ziyang, the horrors of the dead and maimed brought to Beijing emergency rooms. I’ve written about them extensively for years, and I won’t rehash it all here. Let’s just say that this is an incident that must not be forgotten, that it in many ways has helped define the CCP and its obsession with total control of its people — an obsession that has reached its pinnacle under Xi Jinping. I look at China now, with its crackdown on NGOs and repression of all dissent and the inexcusable prison sentences handed down to many who have dared speak out, and I’m not so sad that I left. In some ways, the spirit of the massacre lives on, especially in the minds of government leaders who dread the thought of anything like it happening again. They will never forget how the swelling masses of students challenged their authority; and neither will we.

January 18, 2015

The best post I ever wrote (and I realize that’s not saying very much) is this one. Its simple point is that underneath a veneer of happiness, prosperity and optimism there can lurk a much darker and more dangerous side. People can be content and appreciate their government while being oblivious — willfully or not — to what it is going on beneath the surface.

There have been a rash of articles in recent months of a severe crackdown in China on civil rights lawyers, professors, journalists and activists. A story from yesterday drove this home:

As the year came to a close, at least seven prominent Chinese human rights lawyers rang in the New Year from a jail cell. Under President Xi Jinping, 2014 was one of the worst years in recent memory for China’s embattled civil society. Bookending the year were the cases of two prominent legal advocates: in January, Xu Zhiyong was sentenced to four years imprisonment for his moderate criticism of government policy and leading the “New Citizens’ Movement,” a group advocating for political reforms in China. Outspoken free speech lawyer Pu Zhiqiang, who turns 50 tomorrow, has spent the past six months in detention as authorities continue to build a case against him.

But that’s just for starters. A few days earlier a reporter for the German magazine Die Zeit wrote a harrowing article on how her Chinese assistant was arrested after they returned from Hong Kong where they were covering the Occupy Central demonstrations. Not every article is “must read,” but this one is. I can already hear apologists saying the assistant brought it on herself because she posted images from the scene on social media, and she wore a yellow ribbon showing her solidarity with the demonstrators. In other words, she should have realized China is a police state and not pushed the envelope.

What is a police state? To me, it is any nation whose security apparatus can arrest and hold anyone with no accountability. A police state has no rule of law to speak of. It uses terror, however subtle, to keep the public in line and stifle dissent. As we all know, only four months ago a moderate professor in Xinjiang was sentenced to life in prison for advocating equal rights for the region’s minorities. This is an act of terror, a warning that advocates for change, however peaceful, are putting their lives at risk.

The libraries are among the victims of a sweeping orthodoxy laid down by President Xi Jinping, who continues to consolidate his power. While crackdowns on budding expression here come and go, the new variant is spreading its net more widely, ensnaring even prominent moderate voices.

In recent weeks and months, scholars have seen their books banned after they voiced sympathy for pro-democracy demonstrators in Hong Kong; artists with independent ideas have been silenced; lawyers representing political prisoners have been locked up; and human rights campaigners and civil society activists have been detained by the hundreds.

The Chinese government has to be credited for doing good, for improving many of its citizens’ lives, for overseeing the lifting of hundreds of millions from poverty. If elections were held today and the CCP ran against another party (though there is no other party), the CCP would win. Why then is there such a tenacious campaign to silence any perceived threat to the state, even to the point of locking up lawyers whose only “crime” was representing dissidents? We’ve gone over this before and the answer is the same: the government’s primary objective is to stay in power, and in their minds having a “harmonious” society with no one speaking out is key to maintaining their grip. I’ve been blogging about that since the early days of this site 12 years ago. But now under Xi the problem is worsening, the net is being cast wider and the punishments are more severe.

Most Chinese citizens can live with this limitation on their freedom of self expression. They have more personal freedoms and are free to make money, and they have no reason to cross the red line and question their government. Personal freedoms, yes. Political freedoms, not so much. I have had three friends woken up in the middle of the night, a black hood placed over their heads and taken by the PSB to shabby hotel rooms where they were held for days in one case and months in another. The security apparatus is always watching and no one who is perceived as rocking the boat is safe. What is this if not a police state?

Critics who are perceived as threatening the monolithic portrait of China that its rulers try so hard (and so successfully) to cultivate are an existential threat. And it is getting worse under Xi. I remember so clearly how some 12 years ago the Chinese blogosphere expressed great hopes that newly sworn-in Hu Jintao was going to be a reformer who would usher in an age of greater transparency and openness. There was such a promising beginning when, in the spring of 2003, the government came clean about its cover-up of the SARS epidemic and even held a televised press conference to answer reporters’ questions, including foreign correspondents. Hu went on, of course, to strengthen repression and censorship.

I realize this post, my first in months, is a bit all over the place, but I want to address one related topic, and that is the question of whether Chinese people have been brainwashed by their government. This is a tricky topic because the answer is not black and white; maybe the answer is yes and no.

I know many educated, urbane young Chinese people (young being under 40) who are highly critical of their government. Most if not all say that while they respect the strength of the government in its ability to get things done, they have serious issues with the CCP. They hate its censorship of the Internet and its hysterical pursuit of “harmony.” They hate its propaganda. And yet, these same people all have one thing in common: when asked about certain topics they go into automatic pilot and recite a script that is remarkably similar. When asked about Taiwan, they say it must be returned to China, like a baby returning to its mother’s arms. On Tibet, everything is the fault of the Dalai Lama and his clique that tries to undo all the great things the government has done for the Tibetan people (roads, schools, the end of serfdom).

In her wonderful book The People’s Republic of Amnesia, journalist Louisa Lim notes how thoroughly the government has wiped out nearly all memories of the TSM. Every reference to it is silenced. The Tiananmen Mothers are persecuted. Several Chinese I spoke with in my old office said the only thing they know about it is that angry demonstrators killed innocent soldiers. Ignorance is Strength. This is what I call brainwashing — wiping the slate clean and restricting what the people can know. Anyone who reads this book will have no doubt that the Chinese people have been brainwashed on the subject.

However disappointing the leadership of Hu Jintao was, under Xi it is only getting worse. I could post hundreds of links to stories of his regime’s cracking down on dissenting voices. His government is doing all it can to silence these voices and keep its people brainwashed, at least politically. I said the answer to whether the Chinese are brainwashed is “yes and no.” On most issues, they are not; those I know are free thinking, successful, open-minded people. But most of them know when to shut up and to avoid discussing certain uncomfortable topics. And nearly all have certain scripts, tapes they turn on when asked about sensitive topics like the three T’s. (Japan is another topic where the tape gets turned on.)

China doesn’t look like a police state. Bustling and prospering, with plenty of artists free to express themselves, and with greater and greater personal freedoms, it looks quite open. But ask Liu Xiaobo whether China is a police state. Ask Ilham Tohti, languishing in prison for the rest of his life, whether it’s a police state. Ask some of those hundreds of activists and civil rights lawyers. There is much more to China than meets the eye. It’s a glorious, wonderful country, my favorite place on earth after the US because its people and its culture are so magnificent. But when you pull the curtain back there is a lot of bad stuff happening, too, and if you only see the good you are not seeing China in its entirety.

July 18, 2014

I’ll admit it right at the beginning: I’ve always found there to be something creepy about the Falun Gong. I remember seeing practitioners in Taipei sitting with their eyes closed meditating endlessly. I remember their anti-CCP literature. I remember meeting a group of practitioners at the local annual China celebration day in Phoenix and finding them generally icky. But just because I find them creepy doesn’t mean they are a cult, let alone a dangerous one.

This excellent article presents the argument of one of the best informed China Hands I’ve ever read, Ian Johnson, who argues that the FG is not a cult.

In “Wild Grass: Three Portraits of Change in Modern China,” Ian Johnson writes that the “cult” label was designed to “[cloak] the government’s crackdown with the legitimacy of the West’s anti-cult movement.” Johnson argues that Falun Gong does not satisfy common definitions of a cult: “Its members marry outside the group, have outside friends, hold normal jobs, do not live isolated from society, do not believe that the world’s end is imminent and do not give significant amounts of money to the organization.”

One FG watcher quoted in the article, on the other hand, argues that it could be considered a cult because of its Mao-like deification of founder Li Hongzhi.

His ideology is similarly characterized by moral superiority, defining others as absolute evil, dehumanizing enemies by labeling them snake spirits and possessed by ghosts, extolling the virtues of selflessness and sacrifice, emphasizing the necessity of enduring physical hardship, harassing critics, and denigrating science in favor of his purportedly infallible truths.”

Then, in the same article, David Ownby, author of “Falun Fong and the Future of China,” also makes the argument that Falun Gong is not a cult.

“I found that the group generally passed the smell test,” he said. “Yes, they accord a high degree of veneration to [Li Hongzhi] but he’s not around very much so the possibilities of abuse are much reduced. Yes, members are asked to contribute materially to the organization of events, but in my experience that is completely voluntary. Members keep their jobs and remain in society.”

I remember a reference in Peter Hessler’s book China Driving to a young woman living in the Chinese countryside who had loved being a Falun Gong practitioner. For her it was a social outlet; she enjoyed doing the breathing exercises with fellow practitioners, and they were disappointed when the government banned the practice. Hessler elaborates:

Falun Gong was hard to define. – in some ways it felt like a religion or philosophy, but it was also a basic exercise routine. All of these elements combined to create something enormously popular, and this was especially true in the economically challenged parts of northern China. In Sancha, practitioners liked having a new structure to their lives, and soon others began to join them. By the late 1990s, it seemed most villagers met every morning on the lot at the top of the dead-end road. Cao Chunmei and Wei Ziqi became part of the faithful, and years later she described that period fondly. “Wei Ziqi didn’t drink or smoke in those days, because Falun Gong says you shouldn’t do that. And he was so angry then. It seemed the people in the village were happy we all spent time together in the morning.

I have to have mixed feelings about the FG because there is a cultish element among the core group of fanatics, the ones who write for Epoch Times, but for the most part I don’t believe the Falun Gong has ever been dangerous. They were stupid when 10,000 of them materialized in front of Zhongnanhai, which they should have known would totally freak the government out. (It was the largest unauthorized congregations of demonstrators since the 1989 student movement in Tiananmen Square.) That guaranteed their status as an enemy and a threat to the CCP, whose greatest fear is masses of people gathering together without its approval.

The most inane argument I’ve had with my fenqing friends over the years has been their insistence that the government is so hard on the Falun Gong because practitioners don’t believe in seeing doctors when sick. The government, my friends argued, crack down and jail thousands of FG practitioners because they are concerned for their health. Of course, if the government was so concerned about its citizens’ health it wouldn’t allow them to die in cancer villages or suffer lead poisoning, a gift from nearby factories. It wouldn’t have so aggressively covered up the “AIDS villages” in Henan Province. A really dumb argument: the brutal crackdown is all about compassion. A great excuse for the brutal beatings and arrests of thousands of innocents.

Anyway, in the end I’m still conflicted, because some of the FG fanatics do indeed meet the criteria for cultists. But I believe the vast majority of practitioners simply saw it as a way to exercise and socialize. A cult? In some ways, for at least some of the practitioners. Dangerous? No. Who have they ever hurt? Yes, they scared the crap out of the CCP with the demonstration of their organizational capabilities, but they were non-violent and non-confrontational. I think at the end of the day it might depend on how you define a “cult.” The generally accepted criteria, according to Ian Johnson, is that cultists only marry within their group, they resist traditional jobs, they are totally committed to a hierarchical structure around a central personality, they are isolated from society and accept violence. The Falun Gong doesn’t match the criteria. But I can also understand why a lot of people see them that way.

May 19, 2014

That’s the ingenious title of a new book by NPR correspondent Louisa Lim, who I had the pleasure of working with briefly when I was working on a project in Shanghai in 2010. I just ordered it and plan to review it soon. But the story of how Lim wrote this book is remarkable and bears mentioning now; it brings to light just how dangerous a topic Tiananmen Square remains for journalists today. Lim tells the story in a Washington Post article from earlier this week. I can’t urge you strongly enough to read it all. So intent is China on wiping out all recollections of the Tiananmen Square violence of June 4 that Lim had to go to extraordinary measures to keep her book secret while she was writing it.

I wrote my book on a brand-new laptop that had never been online. Every night I locked it in a safe in my apartment. I never mentioned the book on the phone or in e-mail, at home or in the office — both located in the same Beijing diplomatic compound, which I assumed was bugged. I took these extreme measures because I was writing about that most taboo of topics in China: the Tiananmen Square crackdown of 1989, when soldiers opened fire on unarmed civilians on the streets of Beijing, killing hundreds of people, maybe even more than 1,000.

I stuck to my rules doggedly. When I decided to throw out the structure I had outlined in my proposal and take a completely different approach, I waited until I left China months later to tell my patient editor. I didn’t tell any of my colleagues what I was working on in my off-hours. For weeks I didn’t even tell my children — then ages 7 and 5 — for fear they might blurt something out at home. Later on, when they began to ask why I didn’t have time to play, I swore them to secrecy.

Lim describes how this year’s crackdown on any attempts to commemorate the killings is being clamped down on early, with activists being arrested weeks in advance. She describes the arrest of five attendees at a “June 4 commemorative seminar,” and notes how one Chinese newspaper reported on the seminar:

Of the seminar, a state-run newspaper, the Global Times, wrote dismissively, “It is obvious that such an event, which is related to the most sensitive political issue in China, has clearly crossed the red line of law.

At least they admit there is a thick red line when it comes to Tiananmen Square. It appears this year it’s thicker than ever. To cross it is to violate Chinese law (though I’m not sure which law that is).

Lim’s book is a series of portraits of witnesses and participants in the Tiananmen Square massacre, including a former PLA soldier from the unit charged with clearing the square. She even tells the little-known story of the crackdown on student protestors in Chengdu. Lim’s book and a second book are the subjects of an exhaustive review in The NY Review of Books. It is a more thorough, detail-rich review than I could ever write, so I strongly recommend it.

Another piece in the NYROB examines this year’s crackdowns and how people are being arrested simply for talking about June 4th. This article focuses on activists determined to speak out, and how the government deals with them. Also highly recommended, if painfully grim.

A couple of years ago a blogger I respect put up a post about how he wasn’t writing about the TSM anymore, that it had been covered enough already and that there was nothing to add at this point. I respect and understand that. For me, however, the massacre is an exposed nerve and I can never forget my own surges of emotion, from hope to elation to disbelief to despair as I watched the story unfold. For thousands of Chinese citizens who remember it, the wound has never healed; some of them are even willing to go to prison for their efforts to keep the memory alive. Yet the government is more determined than ever to silence all voices. The censors, Lim writes, are in overdrive this milestone year.

China’s online censors are busy scrubbing allusions, no matter how elliptical, to June 4. As the anniversary nears, judging by precedents set in recent years, the list of banned words and terms will grow to include “64,” “today,” “that year,” “in memory of” and even “sensitive word.” History is apparently so dangerous that China’s version of Wikipedia, Baidu Baike, does not have an entry for the entire year of 1989.

As I have written before, this obsessive mission to delete the protests and crackdowns from China’s collective memory speaks to just how insecure and fearful the CCP remains, even now, when China is doing well and there is no risk of a popular uprising anytime soon. Why are they so afraid? Whatever the reason, the story of the Tiananmen Square protests and the ensuing violence are an indelible part of China’s history, and whether the Party likes it or not, many voices will be raised to keep the memory alive. The vigorous crackdowns this year only make those who have an interest in China more determined to seek the truth about June 4th.

April 18, 2014

This week witnessed the 25th anniversary of the death of former CCP General Secretary Hu Yaobang, an event that ignited student demonstrations throughout China, but most famously in Beijing — we all know the story. It was only two days after his death that the students began flooding into Tiananmen Square.

It is a futile exercise to look at the life of Hu Yaobang and ask, “What if…?” But it’s hard not to wonder. What if he had not been demoted in 1987 and if his program for political and economic reforms were put further into place? A touching interview with his son, Hu Dehua, looks at the opportunities China lost with Hu’s demotion. I enjoyed the part recounting how Hu spoke out against slavish devotion to Mao Zedong.

Twenty-five years after his death, Hu is still best remembered by many for his liberal boldness in freeing China from the strictures of Maoist dogma.

Hu Dehua said one of the most memorable exchanges he had with his father came at the height of the Cultural Revolution in 1968. The senior Hu asked his teenage son whether he thought the popular slogan of the era – “Everything we do is for Chairman Mao; All our thoughts are of Chairman Mao; and in all our actions we closely follow and obey Chairman Mao” – was correct.

Having seen it published in state newspapers, the younger Hu said he did not question its veracity. “Can’t you use your brains? This is clearly problematic,” Hu quoted his father as saying. “Everything we do should be for the people, not for Mao.”

Forty-six years later, Hu Dehua can still vividly recall how shocked he was when his father uttered these words. “It felt as if I’d been struck by lightning – people dared not speak like that in those days,” Hu said of the decade that ensued, when criticism of Mao could result in persecution, prison or death.

“From that moment on, I knew my father was an exceptional man,” Hu, 65, said. “He did not follow the herd.”

The Global Times, ever true to form, this week published a remembrance of Hu that dances masterfully around the fact that his death led to a catastrophe that even today taints people’s perceptions of China. I love the “For reasons known to all.”

For reasons known to all, Hu is rarely mentioned in the Chinese media. Remarks about him that frequently appear on the Internet are often swayed away from official line, given that some either intentionally quoted Hu out of context or reevaluated Hu based on their own values.

The CPC Central Committee has made official judgment on Hu twice from his death to 2005. The authoritative and mature commemoration judgment has stood the test of time. Some grass roots recalled and discussed Hu from their individual angles at different times and for varied reasons. We’d like to share our views against those personal comments.

The official judgment on Hu is well-defended. When commemorating the 90th anniversary of Hu’s birth, the authorities praised his glorious life while circumventing the political controversy of his later years. It’s right to do so. Hu has been written into the history of the nation and the Party as absolutely a positive spirit. Avoiding controversy shows not only respect for Hu but also a responsibility for the course of the Party and the country. This is also the case with judging other late Chinese leaders, one of the prerequisites to ensure Chinese society keeps moving forward.

That’s right. Scrub all the controversy out of the public consciousness to “ensure Chinese society keeps moving forward.” There is no need to look at the past and learn from it. If the memory is pesky, erase it.

One of the most gripping articles I’ve read this week commemorating the start of the Tiananmen demonstrations is from NPR, chronicling the uprising in Chengdu. It reads like a thriller. And it is balanced, and makes a point I’ve tried to make in past posts about the “incident” — the students were not all angels, and there were violent acts perpetrated against police and soldiers. But the violence against the demonstrators was on a far greater scale, and, I believe, could have been averted.

At a nearby medical clinic, the bloodied victims of police brutality lay in rows on the floor. Kim Nygaard, an American resident of Chengdu, recalled that they begged her: “Tell the world! Tell the world!”

A row of patients sat on a bench, their cracked skulls swathed in bandages, their shirts stained scarlet near the collar, visceral evidence of the police strategy of targeting protesters’ heads.

But the violence went both ways: Dennis Rea, an American then teaching at a local university, watched, horrified, as the crowd viciously attacked a man they believed to be a policeman. The crowd pulled at his arms and legs, then dropped him on the ground and began stomping on his body and face, crushing it.

I had just moved to Phoenix in the Spring of 1989, and for the first time in my life I was able to afford cable TV. I remember watching riveted as CNN covered the story of the student demonstrations nonstop. Although at that time I had no burning interest in Chinese affairs I was transfixed by the drama of young people defying a totalitarian government and watching each day just how far they were able to go, with the government seemingly paralyzed. Of course, the government finally overcame its paralysis, and again, we all know the story.

There has been debate among bloggers as to whether we should continue blogging about Tiananmen Square, that it’s time to let go and move on. To me, it is an important part of China’s modern history and should never be forgotten. And it can never be forgiven until the government releases its archives, tells the truth about what actually happened on June 4th, and hopefully offers something of an apology. For many Chinese, memories of the massacre remain acute, especially those who lost loved ones or who witnessed the violence firsthand. The NPR piece relates the story of a Chengdu mother, Tang Deyang, who seeks justice for her son, beaten to death by the Chengdu police during the crackdown there. The government uses all means possible to shut her mouth.

What happened in Chengdu 25 years ago matters enough that the local government continues to devote financial and human resources to muzzling Tang. Her treatment shows how scared the Chinese authorities are of their own recent history.

A quarter-century ago, the government used guns and batons to suppress its own people. Now it is deploying more sophisticated tools of control — censorship of the media and the falsification of its own history — to build patriotism and create a national identity.

Though China’s citizens have become undeniably richer and freer in the post-Tiananmen era, Tang Deying’s experience shows the limits to that freedom. Simply by keeping alive a memory that others have suppressed or simply forgotten, Tang has become seen as a threat to social stability.

What happened in Chengdu matters because it shows the success of the Chinese government in not just controlling its people, but also in controlling their memories. In the China of today, that most personal space of all — memory — has become a political tool.

“The People’s Republic of Amnesia.” I believe in keeping the memory of Tiananmen Square alive. It must not be airbrushed out of the Chinese psyche. It is impossible to understand contemporary China without understanding the causes and effects of the demonstrations. The memory mustn’t die.

Over the past ten years I have put up scores of posts about the crackdown on the students, and as June 4th approaches I will repost the best ones here.

April 11, 2014

There is a moving essay in yesterday’s NY Times by author Yu Hua about growing up during the Cultural Revolution. It starts with the story of teenage man and his father turning over their mother/wife to the police for an anti-Mao remark she made. After being tortured, she was shot to death. Last year the Chinese media told the son’s story, and he related a dream he kept having of seeing his mother and begging for forgiveness, but she remains silent. Yu Hua comments,

Why, in those dreams, does Ms. Fang never say a word to her son? It’s not, I think, that she wants to punish him, for she knows that the true blame lies with others — with those who were in power at the time. She — like the souls of all who perished during the Cultural Revolution — is awaiting their apology. She has been waiting for 44 years.

Yu Hua notes how the government has forgiven itself for the horrors of the CR but has never sought the forgiveness of the Chinese people. Instead, memories of the disastrous social experiment have largely been scrubbed away, and it is even romanticized, with CR memorabilia for sale and models dressed up in Red Guard outfits beckoning customers on billboards. The Chinese people are practically obsessed with Japan’s reluctance to offer an adequate apology for its crimes against the Chinese people, yet the government shies away from acknowledging the nightmare Mao ushered in ten years later that resulted in millions of lives lost.

The attitude of the Japanese government toward its nation’s history infuriates Chinese people. But the Chinese government also needs to reflect on its own record. We keep warning Japan that it runs the risk of repeating its mistakes if it will not face up to its history of aggression. Surely there is a lesson for us to learn, as well.

I just want to go back to the beginning of this story to offer a brief footnote. I was reminded as I read it of a recent lengthy post on another web site that claimed the nightmare of the Cultural Revolution came about largely because people were given total freedom of speech. The implication is that give people too much freedom of speech and the result will be violence. But the opening story of this column belies such simplistic thinking.

In 1970, when China was in the grip of the Cultural Revolution, Zhang Hongbing, a 16-year-old in Guzhen, a county in Anhui Province, made a fateful decision. During a family debate that year, his mother, Fang Zhongmou, had criticized Mao Zedong for his cult of personality. Her son and his father, believing her views to be counterrevolutionary, decided to inform on her. She was arrested that same day.

Mr. Zhang still recalls how his mother’s shoulder joints gave a grating creak as her captors pulled the cord tight. Two months later, she was shot to death.

A form of “free speech” was indeed a part of the Cultural Revolution — but only free speech that remained within the accepted Party discourse. You had no free speech to criticize Mao and his henchmen. To do so meant death. People were punished, even killed, for remarks they had made long ago. So the argument that the CR’s bloodshed was caused by “too much free speech” is spectacularly ludicrous. Just ask Fang Zhongmou, above, about the delights of freedom of speech during the CR. (Sorry for going off on that tangent, but the post in question really bothered me.)

China, so insistent on apologies being made to them, needs to look in the mirror and tell the truth to its people and apologize for one of the ugliest chapters in its modern history. I realize that’s as likely as China releasing all its documents about the student crackdown in 1989, but it would be the right thing to do. Please read the entire essay.

March 25, 2014

Before I discuss this touching, beautifully written book, I’d like to cite a quote from a book review I happened to read at the same time I was reading Hard Road Home. It was an excellent review of Frank Dikoetter’s new book on the Chinese revolution, The Tragedy of Liberation: A History of the Chinese Revolution, 1945-1957. It offers this excerpt:

By the beginning of 1948, when the pressure abated, some 160 million people were under communist control. On paper the party determined that at least 10 percent of the population were “landlords” or “rich peasants.”… The statistical evidence is woefully inadequate, but by a rough approximation between 500,000 and a million people were killed or driven to suicide….

By the end of 1951, close to two million people had been murdered.

I cite this because in this new book of essays, author Ye Fu tells the story of those unfortunate enough to be among China’s landlord and rich peasant classes after Mao’s “liberation,” and how they and their families suffered. It is about much more than that, namely the effort of a contemporary Chinese man to explore his family’s past, but it is the references to the extermination of the landlord classes that are among the most vivid in the book. As translator A. E. Clark tells us in the preface, “An arduous journey drives the classical epic, and the protagonist’s goal is often an apparently modest one: to recover his place and establish his roots.” Mr. Clark reminds us, however, that the epic journeys are wracked with hardships, as in the stories of Odysseus and Aeneas. “It’s a hard road that takes them home.” And so it is for Ye Fu.

The ten-year period following the end of the revolution is commonly referred to as “the golden age,” a time when the Chinese Communist Party issued reforms and the country flourished, a period soon to be upended by the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. The Ian Buruma review I reference above (please read it) debunks this rosy image, as do Ye Fu’s essays, which calmly but clearly depict a country ripped asunder by a new government intent on slaughtering entire classes of its citizens. Again, from A.E. Clark’s preface:

Though his accounts of China’s epoch of war and revolution and convulsive tyranny can be harrowing, Ye Fu seeks to illuminate, not to emote or shock…. He wants to identify the inhumane values that sprang from and sustained a regime of power without accountability.

Nearly all the family members Ye Fu introduces us to eat a lot of bitterness. His mother tries desperately to escape the ties to her father, an officer in the Nationalist army, but with no success. She is labelled a rightist and her home is vandalized, characters identifying her as a class enemy sprayed on their door. She will not be rehabilitated for 20 long years, she and her own mother always suffering with “the taint that caused them tribulation the rest of their lives.” Ye Fu himself spends four years in prison for his participation in an undercover pro-democracy group following the crackdown on Tiananmen Square. Prior to that he worked as a police officer where he witnessed the torture of suspects and prisoners. Yet despite its focus on man’s inhumanity to man, sometimes brutal beyond words, the book is never bombastic; mournful might be the best word to describes its tone. Ye Fu recounts the horrors of the landlords’ extermination and the Cultural Revolution in a calm, dignified voice, full of compassion for those who suffer, and full of sorrow at the chipping away of traditional Chinese values, both under Mao, and later as China opens up and classical values take a lowly place below making money.

My most vivid memory of the book, along with the tender, loving recollections of the life of Ye Fu’s maternal grandmother, is the heartbreaking death of his paternal grandfather who was the wealthiest (i.e., least poor) peasant in his village. He is respected, even beloved by the villagers for his role as a benevolent village leader, arbitrating disputes between villagers and playing a role similar to a town mayor. Mao’s land reform campaign of persecution, and finally extermination, against landlords and “rich peasants” was an early step in unraveling the glue that held society together and heralded what would become the disintegration of traditional Chinese values. I’m sure not all landlords were saintly, but they certainly did not deserve their fate. The dividing of society into different classes, like landlords and rich peasants and poor peasants, paved the way to state-sanctioned barbarism.

In a society founded on an appeal for justice and freedom, people were divided into various grades and ranks, and the highest authorities purposely created opposing camps and fomented hatred to open a chasm between each man and his neighbor, setting them against each other. Of the traditional values — humaneness, righteousness, decorum, and trust — nothing remained. The irreducible principles of ethics were gone. Everyone joined to exalt the Wicked, the False, and the Ugly, taking poverty for excellence, and the entire society seethed in an atmosphere of rapine and violence.

Cruelty was institutionalized as children were taught in class how to inform on their family, friends and neighbors. Ye Fu’s grim recollections from this golden age of liberation, and later of the Cultural Revolution, are beautifully told, and constantly made me wonder what China would have been without Mao (a fruitless task, I know). But the book is much more than a recounting of the catastrophes that came with “liberation.” Some of the most touching moments deal with the author’s relationships with friends and teachers and others from the village where he grew up. One particularly poignant story recounts Ye Fu’s reunion with a blind old man he hasn’t seen in ten years. On his return to the village, he spots him on a bridge playing the castanets.

Turning toward the sound I saw none other than Brother Blind Man leaning on a weathered bamboo walking stick. He stood relaxed at the end of the bridge, swinging the two clappers in an easy-going rhythm. He sang no song and uttered no plea, apparently unconcerned about receiving any money for his performance. His stillness suggested a transcendent disdain for the clamorous world around him. He had the demeanor of a sage of ancient times who had been waiting there for years to direct some gentleman who had truly lost his way.

It is a book about love and humanity as well as suffering. It calls to life one of China’s most terrible periods and puts it in intimate, human terms. And the writing is always poetic. For this, major kudos are due to the translator, A.E. Clark, who has done a masterful job not only in translating Ye Fu’s essays but also in supplying a wealth of footnotes that throughout the essays give the reader context and explain references to Chinese expressions, institutions, historical events, etc. Three years ago I wrote a detailed review of another book Mr. Clark translated, Such is this World@SARS.come. There too, I could only look on the notes with a sense of wonder, so meticulous is Mr. Clark in supplementing readers’ enjoyment of the book with footnotes that provide valuable context and perspective, and that are a pleasure to read.

The publisher of this book of Ye Fu’s essays, Ragged Banner Press, is a small one that depends on word of mouth to support its sales and marketing. I am proud to contribute what I can to this cause. I urge you to order your copy at this website, where you can also read one of the essays in its entirety. If you enjoy it as much as I did, please tell a friend.

It is a tired cliche to call a book “unforgettable,” but there are scenes and images in Hard Road Home I know I will never forget. These essays fill an important gap, giving us a snapshot of this tumultuous period as seen through the eyes of a villager from the countryside. It is an exquisite book, an infuriating book, a touching and at times heart-warming book. Please get yourself a copy.

December 3, 2013

For whatever reason, the fenqing remain virulently adherent to the notion “If you criticize the CCP, you hate China.” This is one of those slam-your-head-against-the-wall arguments that never goes anywhere. “If you hate China so much why don’t you go back to America,” I was scolded many times when I lived in Beijing and had the temerity to point out stories of government excess or corruption or malfeasance or repression. Never mind that I also blogged often about how much I loved the Chinese people and treasured my experience living there, maybe my favorite place on earth. All my friends know I love China. but once you question the government, once you raise questions about the poor being thrown out of their homes or bloggers thrown in prison or rampant censorship you become an enemy of the people and a hater of the entire nation.

He gives a vivid example of an enraged official who vents his spleen at Chinese Internet users protesting the murder of a watermelon vendor at the hands of local officials in Hunan province. He also is enraged that the angry Weibo users aren’t focusing their rage at the US instead and shrieks, “These unpatriotic people are degenerates — the dregs of society!”

“These people so love to bad-mouth their native country, but then they hang around here instead of going off to America!…Off you go, hurry up! I’m all for it. But before you leave, be sure to get some plastic surgery done — you don’t want them to see you’re a Chinese! … These people hate their country so much they feel miserable that they’re Chinese, so let’s pack them off to America — the sooner the better! Such riffraff!”

All for protesting a murderous act by government officials.

For me, the high point of the column is where he relates a post that he himself put on Weibo:

Some people still aren’t clear about the difference between nation and government. And so anyone who aims a criticism at the government gets denounced as a traitor. Let me make an analogy: The nation is like one’s parents, and the government is like a steward; loving the steward and loving one’s parents are completely different things. One can’t change one’s parents, but one has every right to replace the steward.

Obviously a lot of young Chinese people have gotten this message. There was a backlash on the Chinese Internet against the official’s nationalistic hysteria, so much to the point that he was forced to tone it down. But there is another group, what we call the fenqing — young, usually male and totally unable to see the distinction between patriotism and nationalism — who can’t be reasoned with, and who actually become enraged at the very suggestion that there is such a distinction.

There is much more to this story than I can relate in a single blog post, and it is truly required reading. A pity those who need to read it most probably won’t, or will dismiss it as treason. After all, if he feels so strongly, why doesn’t he move to America? As I said, you might as well slam your head against a wall.

September 13, 2013

There is a narrative about the halcyon period in China from when Mao assumed power in 1949 through late 1956 when he launched what turned out to be the insidious “Let 100 flowers bloom” campaign. These were the good years when women were liberated and the nation’s new leaders seemed reform-minded and effective. The bad stuff all came later.

The genius of communist violence was to implicate ever more people in it. After landlords were tried in front of village tribunals, then beaten and shot, land and possessions were divided up among the crowd. It was an incentive to find new victims, many of whom were burned or buried alive. But the more victims, the greater the fear of reprisals from distraught families. So the tribunals kept on killing. Children were not spared. By the end of 1952 up to 2m Chinese had been murdered.

A parallel terror was waged against those deemed to be counter-revolutionaries, Nationalists or foreign spies, some as young as eight, with new victims trucked daily to execution sites. Throughout these orgies of violence, Mao and other leaders coolly laid down quotas—up to four deaths for every thousand Chinese was considered appropriate. In the three provinces under the jurisdiction of Deng Xiaoping, known today for having been open-minded, 150,000 had been executed by November 1951. The total number of deaths will never be known. But in late 1952 Bo Yibo (father of Bo Xilai, whose recent trial has caused a sensation) said, approvingly, that 2m had been executed.

Not everyone could be killed, Mao acknowledged. So a vast gulag was born, swallowing up counter-revolutionaries, vagabonds, prostitutes, capitalists, marketeers, foreigners and, later, intellectuals. The population in the “reform through labour” camps quickly reached about 2m. The relentless indoctrination, one inmate later said, was nothing less than the “physical and mental liquidation of oneself”.

The country was, as Mr Dikotter puts it, well down “the road to serfdom”—literally so for farmers. All the landlord blood spilled was supposed to empower peasants. But the upheaval had devastated the countryside. Draught animals, fertiliser and skills were in short supply. The markets and other networks on which farmers had long depended were destroyed. Farming risked being branded the work of the evil landlord, yet the state demanded ever more grain from farmers in tax. Hardships multiplied. Villagers sold their children.

I realize that Chinese people don’t like to hear foreigners say negative things about Mao. It’s a topic of great sensitivity, as I myself learned the hard way when I tried to discuss it with a co-worker some years ago. But the story needs to be told anyway. They aren’t going to read about it in Chinese textbooks so I am grateful to scholars like Dikotter for making sure that anyone interested can learn the truth. Again, since I haven’t read the book I can’t say it’s all gospel truth. But based on the review, it sounds like a good and important read. I admit, I’ve been sucked into the “halcyon years” myth myself. It’s good to see it debunked.

June 4, 2013

Once again, I am resisting the temptation to write another long post about a story that has been rehashed and argued about so many times that any attempt at serious debate would most likely be futile. Instead, simply go to my post on the TSM last year and follow the excellent links. Whatever you do, don’t miss the post by Philip Cunningham, someone I’ve taken issue with in the past and who is known for cutting the CCP a lot of slack. Read it, and see why he calls it an “unnecessary tragedy.”

No, the students were no angels, and yes, some angry mobs killed some Chinese soldiers, and yes, the story is in no way black and white. But most of the demonstrators were sincere and they were idealistic and they hoped to make a difference. None deserved to die. The argument that it was all worth it because the CCP then did so much good is depraved. The CCP could have gone on to do all that good stuff and grow the economy without the massacre. Revisionists who see the killings as a good thing are, in my humble opinion, self-deluded and, yes, brainwashed.

We don’t have to make a huge deal about this day, but like 9/11, we should never forget it. That’s why every year I’ll say something about it, even if it’s all been said before. And let’s not forget, the CCP can be a benevolent force that can do a lot of good. But when its survival is threatened, something very different can emerge. Things are good now, China’s huge middle class is relatively content. But if things go sour and the people demand change from their government, don’t think what we saw on June 4, 1989 couldn’t happen again. The party will do absolutely everything it needs to to stay in power. Everything. Never forget.

About

A peculiar hybrid of personal journal, dilettantish punditry, pseudo-philosophy and much more, from an Accidental Expat who has made his way from Hong Kong to Beijing to Taipei and finally back to Beijing for reasons that are still not entirely clear to him…